I started writing ten years ago, almost to the day. My muse back then was an intriguing man named Patrick who later became a saint. Those books started as fantasy, written at a mature reading level but aimed at young adults and new adults. Then they morphed into something quite different—the gay man as warrior.

And so the wheel turns…back to the future…

Owl & Sky is a book about gay love and gay warriors. No surprise there. But the erotic is still a gleam in the eye of two young men. Huge question: will readers of m/m lit tolerate a story without raw bedroom scenes? Oh, there are sexy passages. And the story is definitely aimed at a mature reader. But there are no scenes or language that trip over the edge of PG-13. I hope readers will think back to their own sexual awakening and embrace Owl and his mate Sky.

And here’s the intro to the novel: Love across the divide of ocean, against the tide of history.

Two young men try to reunite across the divide of ocean and against the tide of history.

Owl…it’s the name given to Grant Fletcher by his close friends and allies, the Tuscarora Indians of North Carolina’s Ocracoke Island. His best friend is Sky, a native son.

When Grant is forced to leave the island—when his family comes to “rescue” him from the only home he’s ever known—he must also leave Sky. His new father takes him to the tall dark city of Edinburgh, center of enlightenment, and of sinister shadows too. When the story opens, he’s twelve and Sky is fifteen. But reality has a way of making boys into men, very fast.

Sky is a native of an emerging country…America…an indigenous segment of the New World that its new settlers are trying to eradicate or to marginalize. What happens when this young Indian strikes a fateful bargain with a colonial icon named Daniel Boone? When he teams up with an African man once held in an iron collar?

Owl & Sky is a story of young love, a continuation of the universe that began with “The Renegade and the Runaway” series (Unkilted and Unbroken, c. 2019 by Erin O’Quinn).